


Into the Blue With You

by Chellendora



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action, M/M, One Shot, Skydiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 13:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15438123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chellendora/pseuds/Chellendora
Summary: Sherlock is on a case, and he needs to do what to investigate? Skydive!





	Into the Blue With You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merawlee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merawlee/gifts).



> I'm so sorry that this took so long and that it is short and probably boring. My writing mojo has been gone for months and this was like pulling teeth. Hopefully you've enjoy it anyway!
> 
> Any other skydivers out there will probably be able to pick out the inconsistencies in their jumps. I skipped quite a few things just for the sake of not writing an instruction manual for how to do a category A skydive, lol.
> 
> Also I used the American system instead of metric even though they are in the UK. I just didn't feel like dealing with conversions and I honestly don't know what English skydivers use.

John was infuriated. He was terrified, but mostly agitated. Why? Because in less than five minutes he’d be tumbling out of a plane, _alone_ , yet Sherlock looked as though he was…thinking about whatever it was he thought about in his leisure time. His demeanor continued to be placid while the plane climbed higher and higher, the nicotine patch peeking from his jumpsuit collar was the only indicator he was under any stress.

The boy—not quite a man, was he even old enough to be doing this?—sitting in front of John turned around on the bench and started checking his equipment, tugging on straps and checking buckles. It didn’t escape the doctor’s notice that he twice made sure the cut-away and reserve parachute deployment handles were secured. 

“Check your altimeter, mate,” he said, grinning and giving the harness a good shake to check the fit. The doctor’s body moved in tandem.

John swallowed and did as he was told. The hand was passing the “1,” and it took him a moment to remember that it had already gone around once. They were at thirteen-thousand feet, and elevating fast. How did he allow Sherlock to talk him into this? Never mind that he had seen war and flown in smaller planes before, but he never _leapt_ from one. “Evidence for a case” be damned.

The instructor seated in front of Sherlock was checking his gear, much to the detective’s chagrin, and asked him to recite the dive flow they learned in the “Accelerated Freefall” course earlier that day. It took six hours to learn:

“When these lights turn green,” he indicated the row of LED lights circling the plane’s ceiling, “you will leave the aircraft to take your position on the outside left of the place. I will then pivot right onto my knees and grasp the outside bar with my left hand, followed by my right hand, and then I will pull myself to standing outside the craft.”

“We don’t need that much detail—”

“—With my left foot hanging free I’ll look down at you,” he indicated the man behind him with a nod, “and say ‘Check in’!”

The man behind him patted his shoulder with a large hand. “I think he’s got it! Get ready, boys.”

Something in the glance shared by the other instructors on the plane told John that they didn’t typically wave off a student’s recap. He looked at the man behind Sherlock again, but his helmet was on now, the tinted visor obscuring most of his face. His gear was newer than the other instructors, crisp and clean as if this were the first time it was ever used. Even the rig on his back looked fresh, where the other instructors sported well-worn rigs and suits with the emblem of the drop zone’s name embroidered on the back.

The lights Sherlock pointed to earlier flashed on, turning red.

And then they were green.

“We’re on jump run!”

“Is my radio on?” asked Sherlock, as they’d been instructed in class earlier to do.

“Yes,” replied the instructor. “Are you ready to skydive today?”

“Yes.” And from that moment it was go-go-go!

Sherlock’s first instructor climbed out of the plane and to the side. It only took a few seconds for Sherlock and the too-clean instructor to follow. John clearly heard his friend shout, “Check in!” and, “Check out!” He disappeared into the sky below, and the man behind John urged him forward.

The next ten minutes left no time to think, only to do. This was a language John understood well. 

In seconds he had performed the plane exit and was falling—no, _flying_ into the clear blue sky. He could see Sherlock and his two instructors below and to the right of him, and thirteen-thousand feet below them the runway stretched across the landscape like a Bandaid. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, if one didn’t count falling at approximately 140 miles an hour, so John executed his dive flow. He performed a circle of awareness, a trio of practice pulls, and then it was just a matter of reaching pull altitude and deploying his parachute.

At seven thousand feet one of Sherlock’s instructors, the out of place man with the brand new gear, suddenly reached over the detective and pulled the pilot chute of the other instructor. A couple of seconds passed and his chute opened, yanking him up and away. John’s instructors suddenly turned him to avoid being hit, and for a moment they lost stability. One instructor lost his grip entirely, and the other was holding on by one hand, but he managed to reach up and grab John’s pilot chute, pulling it as the wind ripped away his grip and he spun away.

1…2…3…4 seconds and John was yanked upward, the chute filling with air and slowing his descent dramatically. He barely glanced to make sure it was stable before he was looking below him for Sherlock and the other man. It took a moment too long for him to see them, his heart racing in his chest. When he spotted them he had to catch his breath. 

Sherlock was tussling with the man in the air, causing them to turn over and over, which only served to increase their speed of descent. From the distance John was unable to tell what was happening, but it looked like the “instructor” was trying to remove Sherlock from his parachute harness.

Cursing himself for stupid ideas, he gripped his cut away handle and took a deep breath. Pulling down on the cut away handle, he dove head first, keeping his grip on the reserve handle but not pulling it yet. He kept his focus on Sherlock and the man, plummeting so fast toward the ground that it spiraled viciously up at him.

With a crack like thunder he collided with the diver, forcing him off Sherlock and driving them both faster toward the ground. The man fell limply but fast, and when he collided with the runway the sickening crunch echoed up to them, as did the horrified screams of the onlookers.

John felt numb, his vision was spotty, and he was pretty sure he’d just cracked a few ribs and maybe his collar bone too, but he had to pull his reserve handle. Fumbling for it again, he found the cold metal handle and yanked it. Less softly than the main chute, the reserve opened and jerked him upward. He wrapped his arms around his aching ribs and looked around for Sherlock, calling his name into the sky. “Sherlock! Sheeerlooock!”

“Stop shouting, John!” he finally heard above him. He turned into the wind until he could look up and see Sherlock, drifting slowly down in his blue and white parachute as if he had done this every weekend for years. “I knew our killer wouldn’t be able to resist taking me on as his student. It would have been easy to blame my death on a skydiving accident, I dare say.”

“You are a fool and I am never doing anything with you ever again,” John announced.

“That’s what you always say!” Sherlock barked a laugh and then pulled down on his right riser, turning away from him in the air with a smooth 90-degree turn.

John could only glower after him, because it was true. He had followed the man out of a plane, he imagined there was nothing out there that would make him stop following Sherlock Holmes.

After landing and being attended to, John was sitting on the back of the ambulance with bandages around his ribs when the skydiving center’s owner approached him to shake his hand, an impressed grin adorning his face. “I’ve never in my thirty years in this sport seen a move like that, cutting away a perfectly good parachute to dive for your buddy. Why, it shouldn’t have been possible but good thing it was!”

John blinked, taken aback. “Why shouldn’t it have been possible?”

“Well, the RSL line,” he said matter-of-factly, blinking back. “The reserve static line? It should have deployed your reserve chute right away. They’re cheap pieces though, could have just failed.”

John felt his stomach fall out and all the heat drained from him in an instant. But his feet were squarely on the ground and their suspect was being peeled off the tarmac and placed into a body bag. Things with Sherlock had certainly gone _worse_ , and he got a certificate calling him a real skydiver out of it.

**End**


End file.
